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The Mole Song: Undercover Agent Reiji (土竜の唄　潜入捜査官 REIJI)

The Mole Song: Undercover Agent Reiji (土竜の唄　潜入捜査官 REIJI, Mogura no uta: Sennyū sōsakan Reiji) is a 2013 Japanese action comedy directed by Takashi Miike, adapted from Noboru Takahashi's manga The Mole Song and released theatrically in Japan on February 15, 2014. It stars Toma Ikuta as Reiji Kikukawa, an incompetent rookie policeman who is publicly fired so that he can work undercover, or as a "mole," inside Japan's most powerful yakuza syndicate.1 • 2

Key factDetail
Director / screenwriterTakashi Miike; screenplay by Kankuro Kudo, from the manga by Noboru Takahashi1
ReleaseFebruary 15, 2014 (Japan), distributed by Toho; 130 minutes1
Lead castToma Ikuta (Reiji Kikukawa), Shinichi Tsutsumi (Hiura Masaya), Riisa Naka (Wakaki Junna), Takayuki Yamada (Tsukihara Shun)1
Opening weekendFirst place on 293 screens, about 209,900 admissions and about ¥282 million in two days, ending The Eternal Zero's eight-week run at number one3
Total box office¥2.19 billion in Japan4
FestivalsOfficial Competition selection at the 2013 Rome Film Festival; screened at International Film Festival Rotterdam 20141 • 5
Source manga35 published volumes and over 4 million copies in print at the time of the film's release2

Spoilers

Plot

Reiji Kikukawa is a patrol officer with a strong sense of justice who graduates from the police academy with the lowest score on record and sets a station-wide record for written reprimands in a single month. After he tries to arrest a city councilor caught molesting an underage girl, his chief fires him publicly; the dismissal is a cover for his recruitment as an undercover agent, known in the force by the codename "Mole." His mission is to expose the smuggling route of the synthetic drug MDMA and to bring down Shuho Todoroki, the head of the Sukiya-kai, a militant yakuza organization based across the Kanto region.6 • 2

After bizarre tests of his fitness for the job, including a motorway trip tied naked to a car bonnet, Reiji infiltrates an illegal casino called Tiger Jaguar and wins the favor of Hiura Masaya, the young boss of a Sukiya-kai affiliate gang known as "Crazy Papillon."5 • 6 Sworn in as Hiura's sworn brother, Reiji rises through the criminal world while being pulled into the syndicate's internal power struggles and into a war with the Hono-no-su-kai, described in the film's publicity as Japan's largest yakuza group and intent on expanding into Kanto.6 His policewoman girlfriend Junna Wakaki (Riisa Naka) ultimately saves his life.2

Production

Miike Takashi directed from a screenplay by Kudo Kankuro, with cinematography by Kita Nobuyasu, editing by Yamashita Kenji, production design by Hayashida Yuji, and music by Endo Koji. The film was produced by Uehara Juichi, Saka Misako, and Maeda Shigeji for Fuji Television Network, Shogakukan, J Storm, Toho, and OLM, with Toho handling Japanese distribution.1 • 6 The theme song, "King of Men!" (キング オブ 男！), was performed by the group Kanjani Eight.6

The manga source, serialized in Shogakukan's Big Comic Spirits after beginning in Weekly Young Sunday, was regarded as so extreme that it was considered impossible to film, according to interviews at the time of release.7 The casting drew heavily on Miike's regulars and on Japanese character actors, including Takashi Okamura as the cat-obsessed, diamond-toothed gangster Nekozawa, Kenichi Endo, Ren Osugi, Mitsuru Fukikoshi, and Koichi Iwaki as the syndicate boss Todoroki.2 • 8

Style and reception

The film operates in Miike's cartoonish register rather than the grim tone of his thrillers. Reviewers described bright colors, shameless overacting, over-the-top plot twists, and cartoonish violence mixed with coarse humor, with sections of animation and effects inserted into the live action.5 • 9 The Japanese critic Takasaki Jun'ichi noted the film's parodic quotations of classic yakuza cinema, including a blood-drinking brotherhood oath echoing Battles Without Honor and Humanity and a tilted-camera brawl in semi-documentary style.10

On Rotten Tomatoes the film held a Tomatometer score of 45 percent from three reviews; Grant Watson of Fiction Machine called it "a riot of colour and movement" far removed from Miike's more serious films, while Kevin Jagernauth of The Playlist gave it a B and wrote that Miike "has a blast with the material."11 The Japan Times critic Mark Schilling, reviewing the film at its Japanese release, called it a return to the gangster genre that brought out the director's uninhibited best.12 Some reviewers found the 130-minute running time longer than the material deserved, with the madcap energy flagging before the finale.9

Box office and sequels

The film opened at first place on the Japanese box office chart, drawing about 209,900 viewers and about ¥282 million on 293 screens over its first weekend and displacing The Eternal Zero, which had held the top spot for eight consecutive weeks.3 Its total Japanese box office reached ¥2.19 billion.4

The ending was written to suggest a franchise, and two sequels followed with the same director, screenwriter, and star: The Mole Song: Hong Kong Capriccio (2016) and The Mole Song: Undercover Agent Reiji FINAL (November 2021), by which point the source manga had 9.47 million copies in print.2 • 13 • 14

References

  1. THE MOLE SONG -Undercover Agent REIJI-, Japanese Film Database (JFDB)
  2. Dan Fainaru, "The Mole Song – Undercover Agent Reiji," Screen Daily, November 17, 2013
  3. MANTANWEB, "土竜の唄：生田斗真主演作が初登場首位," February 18, 2014
  4. 土竜の唄 潜入捜査官REIJI, Bangumi
  5. The Mole Song: Undercover Agent Reiji, International Film Festival Rotterdam 2014
  6. フジテレビムービー：Blu-ray・DVD 土竜の唄 潜入捜査官 REIJI
  7. シネマトゥデイ, 『土竜(モグラ)の唄 潜入捜査官 REIJI』仲里依紗 単独インタビュー, February 13, 2014
  8. 土竜の唄 潜入捜査官 REIJI, JustWatch
  9. Dave Jackson, review of The Mole Song: Undercover Agent Reiji, Letterboxd
  10. 高崎俊夫, 土竜の唄　潜入捜査官 REIJI 映画評論, 映画.com
  11. The Mole Song: Undercover Agent Reiji, Rotten Tomatoes
  12. Mark Schilling, "Mogura no Uta: Sennyu Sosakan Reiji," The Japan Times, February 6, 2014
  13. The Mole Song -Undercover Agent Reiji- FINAL, Pony Canyon International Licensing
  14. The Mole Song -Hong Kong Capriccio-, Fuji Television Network

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026

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The Mole Song: Undercover Agent Reiji (土竜の唄　潜入捜査官 REIJI)

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